Tonight, I had the chance to hang out with a small group of entrepreneurs here in Atlanta. It was Sanjay Parekh’s Startup Dinner. The idea is to get 8 or people together (no recruiters, no service providers) and hang out over dinner. I believe this started last year by Sanjay and Coty Rosenblath. I attended one of the earlier forms of this awhile back and it was invaluable.
Tonight I got to hang out with a few different people – probably half I already knew and the other half I met tonight. And it was a good mix of crowd.
I think Sanjay is running at least one of these a month – and it’s invite only. You gotta be a cool kid to get on the long list (or so I hear as the rumor) and Sanjay has a rigourous screening program and sophisticated background checking algorithm (most borrowed from code he used when he first built digital envoy) — ok, i’m kidding (sort of) — but if you’d like me to pass along your name to get on the list, drop me a line.
What I like about Sanjay is that he’s not your prototypical local entrepreneur. He’s actually one of those guys that gets it into his head he can help the local community – and he does it. Part of it is he’s between gigs right now and that helps. 
But, seriously, he’s doing something to give back, to help the local startup scene and putting his own time, money and energy making things happen.
If you don’t know some of his recent endeavors, let me illuminate them for you:
- Startup Riot – Startup Riot is the idea of getting a bunch of entrepreneurs together to do quick pitches to different investors. He’s already got like 80 startups signed up and a gaggle of money guys ready to come. If you haven’t signed up yet, well, you may be out of luck. Go ahead and throw your name in and see if you can get on the list – at least as a standby.
- Atlanta Startup Drinks – OK, this sounds like a lot of fun. I haven’t had a chance to do this yet. Anytime you mix drinking with passionate people trying to do insanely crazy ideas, well, you never know what will happen.
- Open Coffee Atlanta – Coke is my vice so I’m not really into $5 bean juice these days… but if hanging out with people to shoot the crap and share wars stories is your thing, then this is your event. I’m hoping to make one of these once i get off the road soon.
Also, if you’re into shooting high powered pistols and you’re a geek, you might want to check out Geeks with Guns this Saturday at 9am. Michael Mealling is hosting it – tweet him for details. My son has a 9:30 am soccer game so I can’t make it. I’m looking forward to doing Geeks with Skeets next.
A lot of people are asking me about what’s going on with all the travel to Palo Alto and Boston. Well, as you’d expect, we’re entertaining a few different investors as you’d expect and that’s about all I can really say for now. More to come on that very soon hopefully. I appreciate everyone’s interest and I promise that as I can talk more, you’ll be the first to find out. For now, we’re staying completely heads down and focused on building Appcelerator, continuing to grow our fast-growing community and taking care of our awesome customers. Thanks for everyone’s nice comments and offers to help.
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